Pokemon Trading Card Game: Rumble Review

Pokemon Rumble was released by Nintendo as a WiiWare title for the Wii late last year and to go along with it The Pokemon Company also released the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG): Rumble. Pokemon TCG: Rumble is a board game that allows up to seven players to compete in a Battle Royale to see who’s Pokemon will be the last one standing. This has a theme similar to how the WiiWare game works if you are familiar with it. Each player picks two Pokemon out of seven on the board that they think will be able to last the longest using one of two markers. If they pick the correct one and knock out a decent amount of Pokemon in the battle, then they will find themselves victorious.

Pokemon TCG: Rumble comes with 16 exclusive trading cards that feature images of the Pokemon from the Wii game. These 16 cards are only available in Pokemon TCG: Rumble and you use them to play the game, but you can also use them in the full trading card game if you like. Even better, you can use most of your existing Pokemon TCG cards with Pokemon TCG: Rumble or you can buy Pokemon trading cards in booster packs to expand and add new strategy to the game.

We also received the Pokemon Trading Card Game: Arceus Collector’s Tin that contains a foil Arceus LV.X black star promo card (DP56), plus four more booster packs to expand your trading card game and Pokemon TCG: Rumble. The Collector’s Tin has a special window design that allows you to display your favorite card in it. My 6-year old son hasn’t done that with the tin, but he does use it to store some of his cards and other items from the trading card game.

Getting back to Pokemon TCG: Rumble, the game comes with the 16 cards, as stated above, a Battle Royale game mat, 4 energy dice, a target die, 52 damage counters, 14 player markers (each player gets 2), and a rules sheet. To play the game you shuffle the 16 cards and then place 7 of them face down around the circle on the play mat. The you place 7 more facing up on top of the 7 that are facing down. Next the player going first places one of his markers on the Pokemon pair (one face-up and the other face-down) he feels will be able to survive the longest. The next player places his marker on his Pokemon of choice and the process goes around twice until each player has two markers on two different Pokemon pairs they feel are the strongest.

After the markers have been place the first player rolls the 4 energy dice to reveal the energy type icon they can use to attack. The energy types match what are in the Pokemon Trading Card Game and they are as follows: grass, fire, water, lightning, psychic, fighting, darkness, metal. There is also an icon on the dice for rainbow energy, that provides any type of energy and a dash (-) which means no energy. Getting a dash is bad unless you get four of them. If you get four dashes then you get to choose to do 100 damage to any one Pokemon on the board.

Once you role the 4 energy dice, then you know what type you have available to use to attack. You look around the board at the available Pokemon cards and choose an attack that matches the number of and type of energy you have showing on the dice. For example, if you rolled 2 grass energy, 1 fire energy, and one dash, you would be able to perform the attack on any Pokemon that needs either 1 or 2 grass energy and 1 colorless, 1 fire and 2 colorless or less or any attack that requires 3 colorless or less. Colorless energy attacks mean that you can use any type of energy to perform the attack.

Once you choose the attack to perform you roll the target die to determine which Pokemon on the board the Pokemon you have chosen will attack. The target die has the number 1, 2, and 3 on it and this means how many Pokemon to the right of the Pokemon attacking will take the damage. After you determine which Pokemon is attacking and which Pokemon is being attacked, you calculate the damage and add damage counters to that Pokemon. After adding the damage counters if Pokemon has counters on it equal to or more than their hit points (HP) in the upper right corner of the card then they are knocked out and you get to take that card. Also, if a Pokemon gets knocked out and there is a Pokemon card face-down underneath it, then you flip that card over and that Pokemon enters the fray. If there isn’t a Pokemon available to flip over, then any player markers on that Pokemon space are removed from the game.

One more thing, when determining damage you also need to keep in mind the Pokemon’s weakness and resistance that can be found on the bottom of the trading cards. For example, if a Pokemon has a weakness to a water type Pokemon then any attacks made by a water type Pokemon to that Pokemon will cause more damage based on the weakness indicator. In the same way, if a Pokemon has a resistance to a fire type Pokemon and it is attacked by a fire type Pokemon, then it will take less damage based on the resistance information at the bottom of that card. Weakness and resistance is determined exactly the same ways as in the Pokemon Trading Card Game, so if you are familiar with it then you should be all set.

Play continues in the same manner until there is only one Pokemon left on the board with a player marker or markers on it. At that point the player(s) with a marker on the Pokemon take their marker and flip it over. They add the number on the back of the marker to the number of Pokemon cards they were able to knock out during the Battle Royale and the player with the highest score wins.

Final Verdict

Pokemon Trading Card Game: Rumble is a lot of fun to play and easily accessible to a wide range of players. We took the game over my wife’s parent’s house one day and had everyone playing in a matter of a few minutes. The game is a board game like any other, such as, Sorry, Monopoly, Clue, etc. In some ways by having the “Pokemon Trading Card Game” label on it that may make it appeal to some and cause others to avoid it thinking it is just another add-on for the trading card game. If you are looking for a strategy board games that is fun for the whole family, you like the Pokemon Trading Card Game, and/or are looking for a way to use your Pokemon trading cards in a different way, then I highly recommend checking out Pokemon Trading Card Game: Rumble.